^ Tennyson said once to Bishop Lightfoot — " The cardinal point of Christianity is the life after death." Certainly this is the cardinal point of Tennyson's own faith. He believed no less strongly than Browning in the powerlessness of death to dissolve human personality. " I can hardly understand how any great imaginative man who has deeply lived, suffered, thought and wrought, can doubt of the soul's continuous progress in the after- life." Tennyson is supremely the poet of Immortality ; and the "intimations of immortality" were ever with him. This is his master-thought, and it was natural that he should approach Jesus Christ from this point. I think Paul's words, " Jesus Christ who
IS9
i6o LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel," summarize pretty accurately Tennyson's view of the mission of Christ. Unlike Browning, who believed that the soul discovers " a new truth " in Christ, Tennyson held that Jesus Christ brought into the perfect light those truths concerning God and man of which we all have dim intuitions.
Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, Deep-seated in our mystic frame, We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds.
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
" Truth embodied in a tale " must surely refer to the historical manifestation of the Incarnate Word — "the revelation of the eternal thought of the universe." And since God does reveal Himself to men, and men dimly and feebly apprehend the revelation, the Incarnate Word must fully and completely bring to light all that range of intuitions in which we recognize the self-communication of the Divine nature to our souls. We are to find our intuitions interpreted in the Incarnate Word — not, mark, in Christ's teaching so much as in His life. His character, His person, for He wrought the " creed of creeds " " in loveliness of perfect deeds." What Christ does for us is to interpret us to ourselves. He brings, by His own life, " life and incorruption to light."!
2. At first sight the words of the text seem to express more than they can fairly be supposed to mean. The two statements made, taken absolutely, are contradicted — the first, by a fact in
1 Ricliard Roberts, The Meaning of Christ, 81.
2 TIMOTHY I. lo i6i
providence, daily before our eyes ; the second, by a fact in history, apprehended by our understanding. Death is not "abolished" since the appearance of Christ ; and the doctrine of " immortality " did not remain to be " brought to light " by His advent. Among both Jews and Gentiles, previous to His comiog, there was the belief in a future, immortal life ; and since His resurrection, death still reigns over the whole race, just as it reigned " from Adam to Moses," or from Moses to Malachi. It is obvious, there- fore, that the text must mean something less than it seems to say, or something different from its literal or conventional import. Now (1) the word which, in the passage before us, is rendered " abalished," is rendered " destroyed " in the 14th verse of the second chapter of Hebrews. It is there said that Christ " took flesh and blood," that, " through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil ; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." We cannot be far wrong in inferring from this that Christ has " abolished " death in some sense similar to that in which He has " destroyed " the devil ; that is to say, that, without literally annihilating either. He has so wrought against, and so far weakened and subdued them, as to restrain them from hurting those that are His. (2) Again, the word rendered " brought to light " does not so much mean to discover, or make known, as a new thing, — which is the ordinary meaning of the English phrase, — as to illustrate, clear up, or cast light upon a thing ; it thus assumes the previous existence of that which is illustrated, but it asserts the fact of its fuller manifestation. Thus explained, the meaning of the text would amount to this, or may be thus paraphrased : Previous to the coming of Christ, the idea of immortal life stood before the human, or the Hebrew, mind like some vast object in the morning twilight ; it was dimly descried and imperfectly apprehended, through the mist and clouds that hung upon or invested it. In like manner. Death, seen through that same darkness (for " the light was as darkness "), was some- thing that appeared " very terrible," and made many " all their lifetime subject to bondage." The advent of the Messiah, in- cluding the whole of His teaching and work — the " appearing " of our Lord Jesus Christ, as " the light of the world," and " the sun of righteousness " — was, to these spiritual objects, like the rising,